The man topping the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's most-wanted Nazi list has been
charged by Hungarian prosecutors for war crimes related to the massacre of
hundreds of people in wartime Yugoslavia.

Hungarian Sandor Kepiro, now 97, was charged with being "complicit in the execution of four innocent civilians in the town of Novi Sad between 21 and 23 January, 1942, as the commander of a patrol".

An estimated 1,200 Jews, gipsies and Serbs died in the massacre that was led by Nazi Germany's Hungarian allies in retaliation for operations carried out by Yugoslav partisans. Families were rounded up and shot on the banks of the River Danube or thrown alive into the frozen river after soldiers had fired into the ice to break it up.

The Wiesenthal Centre claims that Mr Kepiro helped organise the Novi Sad massacre, and the centre listed him in first place last year on its list of ten most-wanted Nazis.

In 1944 and 1946 Hungary's communist courts found him guilty of involvement in the slaughter, but by then he had fled to Argentina.

Mr Kepiro returned to Budapest in 1996, and has always protested his innocence. He claims that he worked as a policeman involved in rounding people up but never took part in executions.